COPAN has announced that FecalSwab™ is the first Cary-Blair collection and preservation system to be supplied with a certification affirming that the medium has no detectable level of nucleic acids from the most prevalent gastrointestinal pathogens.

Infectious disease diagnostics is continually evolving. In particular, the application of molecular assays has steadily increased in recent years. As the field of molecular diagnostics advances, the accuracy and sensitivity of commonly used assays has increased dramatically.

Traditional Cary-Blair systems designed and intended for culture of enteric pathogens are now being widely used for new molecular diagnostics assays.  This changing trend toward molecular diagnostics has revealed the problem of extraneous nucleic acid contaminants in traditional Cary-Blair transports that can potentially cause erroneous false-positive results for Vibrio and Yersinia species. COPAN FecalSwab™ is the first of a new generation of Cary-Blair transport systems, developed with a broad utility in mind, meaning traditional culture methods and contemporary molecular diagnostic assays. .

COPAN’s commitment to high quality is reflected on the meticulous testing on the raw materials used in the production of FecalSwab™ to verify the absence of nucleic acids from relevant microorganisms. The investigation was performed using BioFire® FilmArray® GI Panel.

The BioFire® FilmArray® GI Panel is a multiplexed nucleic acid test for the simultaneous qualitative detection and identification of nucleic acids from multiple bacteria, viruses, and parasites directly from samples in Cary-Blair transport medium. The BioFire® FilmArray® GI Panel is well known for its broad spectrum and accuracy and the COPAN and BioFire® teams worked closely together to perform the QC testing.

The results confirmed the absence of detectable levels of nucleic acids of any of the organisms in the BioFire® FilmArray® GI Panel, and the BioFire™ team reviewed and confirmed these results. Each box of COPAN’s FecalSwab™ is supplied with a certification affirming that the medium is free of detectable level of nucleic acids from the indicated pathogens.